Even so, she didn’t mind filling in at the emergency department when the three rotating emergency medicine physicians in the small hospital needed an extra hand. The challenge and variety of it exercised her brain and sharpened her reflexes—except tonight, when the only thing sharp seemed to be these knitting needles that had become her nemesis.
She was on her twelfth row when she heard a commotion out in the reception area.
“We need a doctor here, right now.”
“Can you tell me what’s going on?” Devin heard the receptionist ask in a calm voice.
Devin didn’t wait around to hear the answer. She and Callie both sprang into action. Though the emergency department usually followed triage protocol, with prospective patients screened by one of the certified nurse assistants first to determine level of urgency, that seemed superfluous when the newcomers were the only patients here. By default, they au
tomatically moved to the front of the line, since there wasn’t one.
She walked through the doorway to the reception desk and her initial impression was of a big, tough-looking man, a very pregnant woman in one of the hospital wheelchairs and a couple of scared-looking kids.
“What’s the problem?”
“Are you a doctor?” the man demanded. “I know how emergency rooms work. You tell your story to a hundred different people before you finally see somebody who can actually help you. I don’t want to go through that.”
She gave a well-practiced smile. “I’m Dr. Shaw, the attending physician here tonight. What seems to be the problem?”
“Devin? Is that you?”
The pregnant woman looked up and met her gaze and Devin immediately recognized her. “Tricia! Hello.”
Tricia Barrett had been a friend in high school, though she hadn’t seen her in years. Barrett had been her maiden name, anyway. Devin couldn’t remember the last name of the man she married.
“Hi,” Tricia said, her features pale and her arms tight on the armrests of the wheelchair. “I would say it’s great to see you again, but, well, not really, under these circumstances. No offense.”
Devin stepped closer to her and gave her a calming smile. “None taken. Believe me, I get it. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”
Tricia shifted in the wheelchair. “Nothing. Someone is overreacting.”
“She slipped on a patch of ice about an hour ago and hurt her ankle.” The man with her overrode her objections. “I’m not sure it’s broken but she needs an X-ray.”
At first she thought he might be Tricia’s husband but on closer inspection, she recognized him, only because she’d seen him around town here and there over the past few years.
Cole Barrett, Tricia’s older brother, was a rather hard man to overlook—six feet two inches of gorgeousness, with vivid blue eyes, sinfully long eyelashes and sun-streaked brown hair usually hidden by a cowboy hat.
He had been wild back in the day, if she remembered correctly, and still hadn’t lost that edgy, bad-boy outlaw vibe.
In a small community like Haven Point, most people knew each other—or at least knew of each other. She hadn’t met the man but she knew he lived in the mountains above town and that he had inherited a sprawling, successful ranch from his grandparents.
If memory served, he had once been some kind of hotshot rodeo cowboy.
With that afternoon shadow and his wavy brown hair a little disordered, he looked as if he had just climbed either off a horse or out of some lucky woman’s bed. Not that it was any of her business. Disreputable cowboys were definitely not her type.
Devin dismissed the man from her mind and focused instead on her patient, where her attention should have been in the first place.
“Have you been able to put weight on your ankle?”
“No, but I haven’t really tried. This is all so silly,” Tricia insisted. “I’m sure it’s not broken.”
She winced suddenly, her face losing another shade or two of color, and pressed a hand to her abdomen.
Devin didn’t miss the gesture and her attention sharpened. “How long have you been having contractions?”
“I’m sure they’re only Braxton Hicks.”
“How far along are you?”